Journal Articles

“I Feel Like It’s a Heavier Burden. . .”: The Gendered Contours of Heterosexual Partnering after Welfare Reform

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One of the explicit goals of the 1996 welfare reform in the United States was to create conditions that would encourage marriage as a means of reducing poverty and welfare “dependency.” With the exception of a few notable studies that examine reliance on abusive partners and former partners, relatively little scholarly attention has been given to the contours of partnering after welfare reform. Using a feminist lens on data from two qualitative studies, the author examines the partnership experiences of a sample of mostly white women three to four years after they had left welfare. An exploration of women’s views of their transitions into and their experiences with partnering reveals that women (re)align with a logic of heterosexual partnering that holds the potential to complicate their lives. The analysis sounds a precautionary note and provides empirical evidence that partnering in the context of the reduced options of welfare reform can diminish women’s long-term stability and that encouraging partnering is, ultimately, an unsustainable policy direction for the support of lone mothers.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Gender & Society

Call Number

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Publisher

: sage publisher., 2010

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

08912432

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Vol. 24 no. 5, October 2010.pp. 565-590

Subject(s)

Welfare reform
Partnership
Division of labor
Mothers in poverty

Specific Detail Info

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